THE TRIAL

Black Panther Convicted of Murder, 1970.
Image courtesy of the Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections & Archives, Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Judge, drawn by Robert Templeton.

Witness Tells Court that Seale
Ordered Black Panther Killed.

In May of 1969, Alex Rackley, a nineteen-year-old member of the Black Panther Party, came under scrutiny from other members for his possible role as an informant. They had good reason to be concerned: during the late 1960s and the 1970s, the FBI used surveillance methods like their Counter Intelligence Program, also known as COINTELPRO, to document the inner workings of organizations like the Black Panthers, which they believed ran counter to the mission of the American government. Everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Malcolm X was surveilled through COINTELPRO, yielding tens of thousands of pages of redacted documents relating to the efforts of civil rights leaders, activists, and affiliates.

What came in the aftermath of the torture and murder of Alex Rackley for his FBI informant status characterized much of the federal government’s response to Black Panther activism at the time. Immediately, Bobby Seale, who had been in New Haven for a Yale event around the time of Rackley’s murder, was arrested and charged alongside several other Black Panther members, despite the government’s inability to actually demonstrate that they were participants in the murder. A lengthy trial followed, along with corresponding outrage, represented by people within and outside of New Haven, the Black Panthers, and broader activist circles. May Day of 1970 was the most significant exemplification of the public’s frustration with the trial and its larger implications for the Black freedom struggle, but it certainly was not the only manifestation of dissent.